In an essay on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, [Marilynne] Robinson declared that “great theology is always a kind of giant and intricate poetry, like epic or saga. It is written for those who know the tale already, the urgent messages and the dying words, and who attend to its retelling with a special alertness, because the story has a claim on them and they on it. Theology is also close to the spoken voice.” In Gilead we are indeed listening, or rather overhearing, the dying words of the venerable, ailing, seventy-six-year-old Congregational minister John Ames writing a letter intended as a bequest to his beloved seven-year-old son. As I listened, I was drawn in, captivated by the voice of John Ames.
Bonhoeffer also refers to theology as “a word of recognition among friends.” In reading, or listening to, Gilead, John Ames became a friend. . . .
In 1555, [John] Calvin looked back on his transition from humanist scholar to Protestant pastor and described it this way: “By a sudden conversion, God turned and brought my heart to teachableness.” . . .
Robinson began to read Calvin deeply and seriously, first the Institutes, but then also the commentaries and sermons. And although she does not use the language of “sudden conversion” to describe this intellectual and theological awakening, she comes pretty close when she confesses: “I was astonished to realize how utterly different Calvin is from anything I had ever heard or read about him. It was really moving to discover such a vast and lucid and gracious spirit. It was as if I had just happened upon Beethoven. Much better.” This discovery of Calvin happened for her at midlife, almost like Dante: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark.” Karl Barth, a theologian who appears a number of times in Robinson’s works, once described Calvin as “a waterfall, a primeval forest, something strange, mythological, something straight down from the Himalayas.” Robinson, like Barth, would make her own pathway through the brambles and brush of the primeval forest that is John Calvin. Her project would be one of retrieval, reclamation, and “resourcement.” — Timothy George, “Marilynne Robinson and John Calvin,” 45, 47, 52.